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"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as such a creative minority and ... espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large." --Joseph Ratzinger

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Let's face it, most people in the world weren't breathlessly awaiting David Bowie's new album. I know the people who love Bowie really love Bowie but they're not many in number. I'm a fan of the man's music and I was interested in hearing his latest - not enough to go out and buy it but interested enough to check it out on YouTube. And then if it blew me away I might buy it.

So I read something at Fox News about Bowie's latest today and I got to tell you I'm disappointed. Bowie made a video that puts Catholics in a bad light and brought in all sorts of sexual imagery along with leering priests and all that garbage.

Directed by Fiona Sigismondi, the controversial video opens with a priest played by Oldman punching a street-urchin beggar in the face, then entering a club -- while perving at women’s backsides -- filled with less-than-saintly behavior. Cotillard embodies a prostitute-turned-saint while Bowie rocks out on stage as the Christ-like figure in robes, while nearly-naked folks dance provocatively around him. In the background, a Cardinal can be seen dealing in cash and a nun prays, all before the stigmata saturates the scene.

It's not that it's shocking - which is what I'm sure Bowie wants it to be. It's that it's so done. Madonna had made a living mixing religious imagery with strippers. Lady Gaga does it. I think that's all Katy Perry does.

I want Bowie to be Bowie, not a cheap marketed knock-off of Katy Perry. I'm sure all the people around Bowie are telling him that he's pushing boundaries but this isn't that. Every boundary blasting the Catholic Church and profaning Christianity in general has been done over and over and over. And when they do it, they get applause from everyone who agrees with them from all the cool people.

If an artist really wants to shock people they should act as if something in this world was sacred, other than the ring of cash registers.

29 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The video is NOT anti-Christian. Why do you think? It is a piece of art about female martyrs (among others St. Lucy, Jeanne d'Arc), the hypocrism of Roman-Catholic church (as an institution) and a plea for and praise to the real, innocent Messiah. That all in relativistic manner, using historical imagery. What's wrong with that?

But dare to criticise the Roman-Catholic church that was responsible for structural and frequent child abuse worldwide, the denial of this abuse, the protection it's abusive priests, the cold denial of it's innocent victims. Is Bowie to blame for that?

You can tell that Bowie is now a has-been.He has to resort to the crudest form of anti-Catholic bigotry to attract any business from the folks who could not care less what sort of new album he produced. No different from Madonna and a hundred other box-office bombs.

Yeah, because it's a great idea to play to the 'pervert priest' stereotype instead of portraying them as the tiny minority they really are. Or to act like they hate the poor when there's so many living in Third World hellholes actually doing something besides bitching on a video or on the internet. But I'm sure you'll just say they cause that poverty by not turning them into some selfish, sterile-ass society like ours. Just to get that out of the way so you don't have to do that.

Did you notice there's no 'good' priests portrayed? Probably not. If you did, I guess you wouldn't care. You probably don't give a damn that the pendulum is swinging the other way and now plenty of false accusations are flying around. But I'm sure you think they're all totally true, every last one. I know one myself who was slandered and put through hell by an idiot looking for a cash-in. But no, it's a conspiracy, he's really guilty because somebody said so.

But how much reason, fairness and common sense can I expect from a guy on the idiotnet? About as much as from the entertainment industry I suppose. Don't know why I bother anymore.

And stop with the 'it's' stuff; it'''''s making you look even sillier than you already are.

Ok, there was a minority of priests that abused children, but the big majority of priests looked away, protected their fellow priests and left the victims that needed love, care and affection in the cold. Wat a wonderful institution that Roman-Catholich church.

And Nick, the church hide behind that for half a century! And now you complain we can't hide behind that for much longer...

Ahum, the world upside-down. A bit hypocrite, isn't it? Another prove that the church and some of the followers does not take real, deel and profound reponsibility for what happened. Poor vicitms. Do you rally care?

But go and shame an artiest for his integer work. Bravo! That's heroic. Do have ontving better tomdo?

I like some of David Bowie music as a teen but as we know many in the entertainment industry are anti-Catholic (Sinead O'Connor, Billy Joel) just to name a few (even Madonna) I recently got to see Peter Frampton perform at the Cincinnati Ballet he has worked with Bowie in the past and is a liberal Obama supporter but at least he does not appear to be a Catholic Basher. Some like Bruce Springsteen claim to be Catholic but are not in reality.

"I want Bowie to be Bowie, not a cheap marketed knock-off of Katy Perry. I'm sure all the people around Bowie are telling him that he's pushing boundaries but this isn't that. Every boundary blasting the Catholic Church and profaning Christianity in general has been done over and over and over. And when they do it, they get applause from everyone who agrees with them from all the cool people."

Reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the protesters are marching saying " We're all non-comformist" over and over again. If the idea for the video is any indication of the albums originality, then i imagine this blog post is the last I'll hear of it.

"I want Bowie to be Bowie, not a cheap marketed knock-off of Katy Perry. I'm sure all the people around Bowie are telling him that he's pushing boundaries but this isn't that. Every boundary blasting the Catholic Church and profaning Christianity in general has been done over and over and over. And when they do it, they get applause from everyone who agrees with them from all the cool people."

Reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the protesters are marching saying " We're all non-comformist" over and over again. If the idea for the video is any indication of the albums originality, then i imagine this blog post is the last I'll hear of it.

"Ok, there was a minority of priests that abused children, but the big majority of priests looked away, protected their fellow priests and left the victims that needed love, care and affection in the cold." - Anonymous

"OH NO. THE MEDIAAAAAA. One would think a millennia old institution would be able to combat the EVILL MEDIA. Apparently not."

"Combat" the media? I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I think a person wouldn't have to think too hard or look too far to find an example of a large news outlet employing exaggeration, distortion, or outright falsehood in the interest of publishing a story that will attract readers and/or serve the particular agenda of the people who run the company. Even in the age of the constant flow of up-to-the-nanosecond information brought to you by the internet, media outlets can attempt to shape public opinion simply by which stories (or aspects of stories) they emphasize andwhich stories they ignore.For those who have such a negative opinion of Catholic priests, please consider St. Damien of Molokai, whose feast day we celebrate today.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Damien

or at least this quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:"The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.

It is sad that so many artists still think that this kind of thing is really so cutting edge. Anti-Catholicism is safe, passe, and overdone. This video has nothing to do with the child abuse scandal. It sheds light on nothing. There is no social commentary.

It takes images of the sacred (Lucy, the stigmata, vestments and habits) and submerges them in lust. It's bland, it's without content or substance. It's almost too thoughtless and blase to be offensive.

And anonymous, you do the victims of abuse no favor with your kinds of comments. The abuse crisis is not a Catholic problem, it is a cultural problem from which the Catholic Church has also suffered.

But the Catholic Church has done more than any other institution in our society to address the problem. The child protection schemes in place in Catholic parishes and schools are light years beyond what pretty much anyone else is doing. The abuse rate has plummeted through the floor (even though it was one of the lower rates of any segment of society). Tolerance for abuse and cover up is lower than pretty much anywhere else. It certainly hasn't been perfect and the problem has not been completely rooted out, but the Catholic Church seems to be the only social institution that is doing anything at all.

But what of fathers, mother's boyfriends, teachers? What of those segments of society that have always had the highest rates of abuse. What of Protestant ministers, youth leaders, neighbors, all the other segments of society that had abuse rates higher than priests even when the problem was at its worst in the Catholic Church and continue to now? The constant harping on this as a Catholic problem has allowed the society-wide problem to continue to fester. It has kept attention off the problem where it still exists, where it has always been worse, where it is not been addressed at all, much less as well as the Catholic Church has.

This is not to say that the Catholic Church should not have scrutiny, nor that the very real crimes of the past should be ignored. But the scrutiny and the criticism should be honest and proportional. And the same scrutiny and criticism should be extended to the abuse crisis throughout our society. All this energy spent on an institution that has done more than any other to address the problem of abuse leaves leaves little to spend helping tear down the structures of abuse that pervade our society.

So, do you turn every blog post about fathers into a tirade about abuse? every blog post about teachers? Neighbors? If you don't, if you only have ire for abuse when it is done by Catholics, then you prove that you care as little for the victims of abuse as bishops who shunted abusers from parish to parish. You show that you really only care about taking shots at the Catholic Church and that abuse is just a handy cudgel to use. Your ire is as blase and without substance as Bowie's blasphemy.